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Poldarn (God)
Poldarn (also known as Polden in the Western Islands). From The Complete Temple of Wisdom: An obscure southern god, now neglected. Iconography: a crow with a ring in its beak. Assigned duties: war, fire, sundry domestic and industrial crafts, the end of the world. Literary and cultural significance: none. Also known as Bolodan (Sthrn), Polidan (lit.), the Dodger (colloq.) See also: Mannerists; Life of Fthr Azonicus of Lomessa; Enlightened thought; prophecies; end of the world, the; Land and Sea raiders, the; carts & wagons. Extracts from The Concordance '' Poldarn, also Poldan, Polodan; c.f. the Tulicite Boliden (s.v.). A deity much revered at one time in the provinces of Satn, Morevish and Thurm but little known outside them.'' A minor god of discord, prophecy, fire, war and death, mostly favoured by artisans, craftsmen and the uneducated middle classes of small towns. Possibly as a result of the conflation of the Morevish Poldarn with the Tulicite Boliden (primarily a god of labour and the forge, thence fire in general, hence the confusion with the apocalyptic qualities of the better established Morevish deity), also revered by those engaged in trades or crafts based on the employment of fire and heat, including smiths, founders, charcoal-burners, glaziers, potters, brick and tile manufacturers, bakers and others likely to employ fire in a forge, foundry or oven. In the brief imperial cult, most popular among . . . freelances and mercenary soldiers, whose practice it was to invoke the aid and forgiveness of the god when committing a captured town or city to the flames '' . . . substantially as a god of death and transition . . . '' '' . . . a patron of change and reincarnation - the conceit being the agency of fire to purge, purify and reshape matter, as in the melting down of metals and the refinement of gold . . .'' '' . . . represented by the symbol of the crow (a carrion bird being deemed an appropriate image for the transition of dead matter into living matter by an impure agency) holding in its beak a golden ring (the gold referring to immutability, the ring to the cycle of death and rebirth) - in this context, c.f. the paradoxical conceit whereby Poldarn loses his memory at the start of his journey (crude allegory for scrap metal losing its original shape when melted down in the furnace) and regains it only after encompassing the destruction of the world, presumably - though nowhere explicitly stated - in favour of the better world to come . . .'' '' . . . latterly represented by a tradition of a god riding through rural areas in a wagon escorted by a female acolyte, his circular journey signifying the cycle of transhumance in pastoral societies, the solar cycle, et cetera. (Note also the variant tradition in which Poldarn departs across the sea after planting, travels to a mysterious unknown island and returns in time for harvest; some conflation suspected here with the historical figure of Kjartan Bollidan, leader of the Unferth Penal Colony expedition during the reign of Eucleptus III; Kjartan's supporters maintained that he would one day return across the sea to overthrow the empire and free the oppressed . . . '' '' . . cliché (e.g. "Poldarn's journey", fig., for a circle,. "Poldarn's winged servant" for a carrion bird, "Poldarn's sleep" for forgetfulness, "riding beside Poldarn" or "driving Poldarn's cart" as euphemisms for terminal illness or other such prospect of certain death . . )'' See also: Thurmites; Mannerists; Tulice; labour, patrons of; solar deities.